content v subject matter

Anish Kapoor, in conversation with John Tusa.

'Kapoor himself insists, I've nothing to say, which is where, here in his Camberwell studio, we begin.

JT Why do you say you have nothing to say?

AK One of the currents in the contemporary experience of art is that it points to the experience of the author. That is to say it dwells in the author. It seems to me that there's another route in which the artist looks for content, which is different from  meaning. It may be abstract, but at a deeper level symbolic content is necessarily philosophical and often religious. I think I am attempting to dig away at - without wanting to sound too pompous - the great mystery of being. And that, while it has its route through my psychobiography, isn't based in it.

JT So at least you are walking away from the romantic idea of the artist, that it is the life of the artist, the view of the artist, the experience of the artist which is absolutely central to the art, and you take the artist with the art bag and baggage.

AK I am. I think I'm saying that there is another position. Maybe its my Indian roots that prompt me in that direction. Of course, I also see a connection thereby with the minimal art of the sixties and seventies. The idea that the object in a sense has a language unto itself, and that its primary purpose in the world isn't interpretative, it is there as if sitting within its own world of meaning.

JT You make the distinction between subject matter - and one can certainly see that your pieces are not about subject matter - and content. Your sculptures are full of content. But just fill out that antithesis.

AK Putting aside subject matter is saying that a content can arise. It does this seemingly out of formal language, considerations about form, about material, about context. When subject matter is sufficiently out of the way, something else occurs; maybe it is the role of the artist then, as I see it, to pursue this something that one might call content.'


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